The Good Thieves

by Katherine Rundell

  The dogs were followed by an escape artist, a small Polish man who smiled half a smile while he was dunked in water with his arms padlocked behind him. He was followed by a tightrope walker in a silver leotard. Then Arkady sat up, his back straight.

  ‘Here it is!’ he said. ‘Watch this!’

  A fine-boned man strode on to the stage. Behind him came a line of horses, led by Moscow, her gleaming flank polished with gold dust to make her shine. Vita gasped at the sight of her.

  ‘This is the best part,’ said Arkady. ‘The liberty act. That’s Morgan Kawadza!’

  ‘Kawadza?’ Vita turned to Samuel, ‘So he’s your—’

  ‘My uncle, yes,’ said Samuel; and then he was on his feet and walking backwards, into the darkness of the wings, out of sight of the man on stage.

  ‘He’s the best in the world,’ said Arkady. ‘My father nearly cried with happiness when he agreed to join the company. He trained with the Lipizzaners in Vienna.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The Lipizzaners! They’re the cleverest horses in the world – they were bred to be ridden by Emperors. But watch! You mustn’t even blink!’

  A waltz began to play. Kawadza clicked his tongue, and called out. The language was not English. ‘He taught the horses in English and in Shona – the language in Mashonaland,’ whispered Arkady. ‘And Moscow speaks Russian, too, of course – I taught her.’

  The horses began to dance, moving backwards and side to side to the music.

  ‘Watch Moscow. She’s perfect,’ said Arkady. ‘There’s no horse like her. She’s a Lipizzan.’

  Moscow reared up and walked several steps on her hind legs, whinnying in triumph, then turned a slow pirouette. Kawadza called out to her, telling her she was a queen among horses, that he was proud of her.

  ‘One day soon, Moscow will belong to Samuel,’ said Arkady, and he said it in the way that people might say, ‘One day, he’ll be King.’

  The act came to an end, and Kawadza swung himself on to Moscow’s back and rode her off stage, to hysterical applause.

  Kawadza caught sight of Arkady and stopped. ‘Hi, Ark. Where’s Sam?’ He swung down from Moscow’s back. ‘Wasn’t he just here?’

  Arkady was red; the stress of being spoken to by his hero had turned his ears purple. He swallowed. ‘Yes, sir. He must have gone to the bathroom, sir.’

  ‘Not still dreaming about that flying, is he?’ The man’s accent was stronger than Samuel’s; it had a rich burr to it, and his vowels stretched out long over his tongue.

  Arkady swallowed harder. He seemed to be trying to masticate a toad. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Good. I’ve told him – and I’m telling you, so you can remind him – he doesn’t have a choice. Do you hear me?’

  ‘I hear you, sir,’ whispered Arkady.

  Kawadza glanced out at the audience, rustling in its rich silks and satins. His voice was rough. ‘I met a man on the boat coming over – he wanted to be a dancer; he could leap six feet from standing. They looked him over, and they laughed: there could never be a Black prince in the ballet. No. The world isn’t generous with its imagination to people of my skin: it has already decided what we are. And Samuel is a child. It’s my job to protect him from disappointment.’

  Vita’s chest tightened, and she said, ‘But—’

  He shook his head, quick and hard and sad. ‘There can be no but.’ Moscow whinnied, and he raised a hand to her flank. ‘And anyway, there’s no future in tumbling! So he can turn a cartwheel. It’s not enough. He’ll waste his time on cheap tricks, the world will turn on him and break his heart, and he’ll be left with nothing. And without him, who’s going to carry on the act when I’m gone? He’ll join me with the horses when he’s fourteen.’ And Morgan Kawadza sighed, looked around once more for Samuel, and strode away, Moscow following.

  There was a long pause, in which Vita could think only of Samuel, swinging from the crossbar of the trapeze, his face shining. She made her hands into fists inside her pockets.

  Then the band started again, and under cover of the noise Samuel slipped back into his seat.

  ‘Your uncle was just here –’ began Vita in a whisper.

  ‘I know. I was behind the fire-eater’s buckets.’ His whole body was rigid; his shoulders stood up near his ears.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Fine.’ He forced a smile. ‘You should watch – it’s Lady Lavinia next.’

  A beautiful woman, her dark hair falling to her waist, dressed in a sweep of black silk, her fingers covered in scars, came on stage from the other side of the wings. She carried a handful of knives.

  ‘You don’t want to meet her in a dark alley,’ said Samuel. ‘Look!’

  Lady Lavinia began by juggling four knives. The audience gasped and cheered, and she grinned out at the stage lights and laughed: the laugh of a virtuoso pianist applauded for playing a scale. She added three more knives, then another four, and five more, until there were sixteen knives spinning in the air. She caught them behind her back, spun a knife as long as her arm on her fingertip. She threw apples and knives into the air and then caught them as they fell, the apples neatly halved. The crowd’s applause grew deafening.

  Vita gripped her chair until the plush cladding peeled away under her fingers. A great spurt of longing rose up in her. It must feel astonishing, to know how to do that, to make a moving object curve through the air according to your will, she thought. And it was followed by another thought, one so quiet and new it barely made its way to the surface of her mind. I could do that.

  Lady Lavinia retreated. ‘There’s just the elephant still to come,’ said Arkady.

  ‘An elephant! That must be amazing.’

  Arkady shook his head. ‘He’s beautiful, yes – so beautiful it hurts – but elephants aren’t like the dogs. I wish my father wouldn’t have them, but he says you need it for the crowds.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The dogs are artistes. They want to work – they want to play. The elephants just want to go home. I’ve told him and told him, but he won’t listen.’

  ‘How do you know the elephant doesn’t want to work?’

  ‘I feel it – here,’ and he struck his chest. And then he grinned, embarrassed, and turned to watch the stage.

  The stage at Carnegie Hall was large – broad enough to hold forty men, shoulder to shoulder. The greatest musicians in the world, Vita knew, had walked across its wooden boards. But it was suddenly dwarfed, rendered small and flimsy and mundane, by the animal that came stepping out of the door on the far side of the stage.

  It was bedecked with ribbons; a red silk cloth was laid over its back, and a gold triangle of silk draped down between its eyes. Somebody had pierced one of its ears with small gold hoops, once at the top and once at the bottom, and a filigree gold chain swung to and fro between the hoops. A silver chain ran between its two front feet. A long thin man, carrying a long thin stick, followed behind, his bald head shining with sweat.

  The elephant stood, looking out at the audience, and extended its trunk into the air, as if groping for something. The crowd hushed.

  The man shouted an order, and the elephant reared up on its two hind feet, trumpeted, and came crashing down again. The floorboards shook. Splinters spat across the stage; Samuel covered his face with his elbow, and Vita dodged to the left as one flew past her right eye.

  Arkady whispered something under his breath that Vita felt confident was not polite.

  The man shouted another order, but the elephant did not move. The man shouted again. The elephant stayed where it was, its eyes studying the theatre; the painted ceiling, the rows of watching, hungry faces. Its eyes, which were closer to gold than brown, closed.

  Vita felt her own eyes unexpectedly prickling, and the bridge of her nose swelling in the way it did before tears, and she scowled, hard, at her left foot, to banish the water rising in her. The image behind her eyes was not of Carnegie Hall, but of Grandpa, stooped and shackled by something she co
uldn’t see.

  The man reached out with the stick; its end caught the light, and Vita saw with a lurch that it wasn’t wood at the tip, but knife-sharp iron. It wasn’t clear what had happened, but the elephant bellowed, rose to its feet, and reared up to stand on a single hind leg.

  The audience whooped and cheered. The man bowed. The elephant was led off stage, back the way it had come, out of the harsh light, and into the dark of the wings.

  The house lights rose, and the audience broke into loud chatter. Vita moved to look around the edge of the door into the auditorium, watching the riot of silk skirts flap as the seats emptied. She was just about to ask if she could meet the elephant when her breath halted halfway up her chest.

  A man was getting to his feet in one of the boxes, offering his hand to a blonde woman dressed in a dusty-pink gown. He turned, and his eyes met Vita’s as she stood, half on and half off the stage.

  The man was Victor Sorrotore.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Fear caught at her body and dragged her backwards, but not before she saw the shock of fury and revulsion that crossed Sorrotore’s face. He exited the box at a run.

  She darted back into the shadows and turned to Arkady and Samuel. She fought to conquer the fear, to beat it down; she would not let it swallow her.

  ‘We have to go,’ she said.

  ‘Go where? This is where we live!’ said Arkady.

  ‘Sorrotore’s here. He saw me. And, if he finds me … I have his ring with me.’

  Arkady’s face creased. ‘What ring?’

  ‘I took a ring from his mantelpiece – I think it’s evidence of something horrible. Someone came searching for it, under my bed—’

  ‘But—’ began Arkady, but Samuel interrupted him. He had seen the panic in her eyes.

  ‘We can’t wait here,’ he said. ‘The audience is allowed to come backstage, if they’re rich enough. We’ll go out the back way.’

  They darted out of the wings, down the corridor. Vita stumbled on the slippery floor and fell, scraping her palms on the wood, but then she was up again and her eyes defied comment. They ran for the stage door, which was ajar, the night air blowing in. Samuel was ahead and darted through it.

  Then without warning Samuel jerked back inside, snatched open another door off the corridor and pushed her through it. The three stood in a chaotic props cupboard: masks, capes, and a donkey’s head were stacked, teetering, on shelves. A pile of hair showed itself to be a stock of false moustaches.

  ‘What’s going on?’ hissed Arkady. ‘This is hardly the moment to be accessorising.’

  ‘There’s a man waiting out there,’ said Samuel.

  ‘What did he look like?’ asked Vita.

  Samuel shook his head. ‘I only glimpsed him – but tall, and dark-haired. He had a rich person’s face, and a lot of oil in his hair.’

  ‘That sounds like him.’ Vita stared around them. The room was windowless. ‘Are we trapped?’

  ‘We’ll go out the other way,’ said Samuel. ‘Through the lobby, and the main doors, like everyone else – we’ll blend in.’

  Arkady grabbed his father’s top hat from the shelf. ‘Put this on.’ It slipped down low over her ears. He snatched up one of the moustaches and tried to fix it to Vita’s upper lip.

  ‘Sure,’ said Samuel, ‘because that’s the way to blend in – a girl in a moustache and a top hat.’

  ‘Then what?’ said Arkady.

  Vita put the hat and moustache back on the shelf, and Samuel offered her a dark-brown trilby from a hook. It fitted perfectly. She tilted it low over her eyes.

  ‘Better,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

  They ran back through the corridors, through two side doors, and they were out, suddenly, in the sparkling lobby, the vast sweeping staircase ahead of them. A family of six – two adults and four children, all exquisitely dressed – were moving slowly down the stairs, the chattering three-year-old setting the pace. Samuel gave Vita a push, and she fell in behind them, trying to look as if she belonged.

  At the bottom of the stairs stood the woman in the dusty-pink dress, looking at her watch. Nearby, a girl with a white-blonde plait was winding a thin coat tight around her shoulders.

  Look normal, Vita told herself, scanning the crowd. And indeed, to the people passing by, she looked like just another theatregoer, albeit one with unusual taste in hats.

  The girl with the blonde plait turned, and Vita’s stomach swooped. It was Silk, her mouth turned down like a horseshoe, her eyes focused on something behind Vita.

  Vita twisted to follow Silk’s glance – to where a foot now appeared around the corner of the building, and Sorrotore’s black cashmere coat swung into view.

  Vita slipped behind the tallest of the children as Sorrotore passed by.

  It all happened very fast. Silk crossed in front of Sorrotore, her head low, and her hand flickered out.

  Sorrotore was of a class trained not to see the poor. He ignored her, and called out to the woman in pink. ‘I’m so sorry, my dear – I did say not to wait! I thought I saw an old business associate.’ He took her arm, and turned, once, to scan the steps behind him. Vita pressed herself further into the family group, head down, sliding behind the mother’s back. Sorrotore gave a hiss of annoyance, turned left, and started walking with the woman in the direction of Central Park. Silk set off in the opposite direction in a walk that was almost a run, and Vita drew a breath.

  The family raised six collective eyebrows, finding a girl in a trilby and red boots suddenly in their midst, but the adrenaline thundering through Vita’s blood protected her from embarrassment. Arkady and Samuel came running down the steps.

  ‘Did he see you?’ said Arkady.

  ‘Are you OK?’ said Samuel.

  Vita nodded. ‘We need to follow.’

  Rimsky fluttered down from the rooftop of Carnegie Hall, landing on Arkady’s shoulder.

  ‘Follow Sorrotore?’ he said. ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘No. Follow a girl.’

  Samuel smiled his half-smile. ‘A specific girl, or just girl pot luck?’

  ‘I’ll explain on the way. I know where she’ll be.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It was a cold journey, the walk from Carnegie Hall to the Bowery; long and cold and dark, but the stars were out, and New York shone around them. They went as fast as Vita could go, heads down against the icy wind, Rimsky riding on Arkady’s shoulder. At least, Vita thought, New York was not easy to get lost in; most of the streets were laid out in squares, East 22nd leading to East 23rd as neatly as dominoes.

  As they walked, Vita explained about Silk, and the pickpocketing, and the Dakota, and the lock-picking.

  ‘And she said she won’t help?’ said Samuel.

  ‘Yes. She says she only ever works alone.’

  ‘So …’ There was a polite but pointed silence before Samuel said, ‘Why are we going to find her?’

  Vita took her penknife from her pocket, threw it into the air, and caught it behind her back. Excitement had entered her blood. ‘Because! Because she was there, at Carnegie Hall. Waiting. I think she followed Sorrotore. And I want to know why.’

  ‘It could just be a coincidence.’

  ‘I don’t think Silk does coincidences.’ The Irish girl had a face that said she found the concept of fate insulting.

  The streets grew emptier as they went further south, and rougher at the edges; paint peeled, and the restaurants they passed began to advertise more unusual-sounding foods: pig’s heart, and sheep’s feet. They passed a diner with its menu written on the window in white marker, and above that, the words ‘Bowery Bar’.

  ‘This is the Bowery.’

  ‘And we’re here because … ?’ Arkady’s voice tailed away on a question mark.

  ‘Because she said, “You wouldn’t last three minutes in the Bowery!” Let’s split up,’ said Vita. ‘She’s got to be somewhere round here.’ She spoke with infinitely more confidence than she felt.

  Arkady set
off down the Bowery, Samuel took Prince Street, and Vita headed towards Chrystie Street.

  Vita peered down the alleyways as she passed them, seeing only rubbish bins. She passed a musical theatre advertising Daisy Johnson and Her Bouncing Babies, dodged a large cat with no tail, skirted a medium-sized rat. Then, just as the cold was seeping into her kneecaps and elbows, and the wind had taken all the blood from her face, she looked down an alley off Hester Street and saw Silk.

  But Silk was not alone. She was standing with her back against the wall, and in front of her were the boys Vita had seen outside the Dakota. They looked to be in their early teens, but with the bodies of adults. One boy was long and lanky, the other short, with knots of muscle in his arms and legs.

  Their voices were full of accusation.

  ‘Liar,’ said the taller boy. ‘We’ve got good information you were at the Hall. Give us what you got.’

  ‘I didn’t get anything, I said!’ said Silk. ‘I was just scoping.’

  The shorter boy had a face like a lawyer. ‘That’s not true, though, is it?’

  ‘We don’t want trouble,’ said the taller boy, ‘but we’ll make it if we have to. Hand it over!’

  ‘Ah, flip off and leave me alone,’ said Silk. Her voice was careless but her face was a vivid white in the street light.

  The shorter boy put his hand on Silk’s upper arm. She shook him off. ‘Don’t touch me!’

  ‘Don’t think we won’t hit you just because you’re a girl,’ said Tall. ‘Those rules weren’t made for us.’

  Vita glared at the sky and stepped around the corner. ‘Let go of her,’ she said.

  The two boys spun round, their eyes wide, first in surprise, then in half-amused annoyance.

  ‘Who’s your friend?’

  ‘What’s wrong with her foot?’

  ‘And why’s she dressed like a private detective?’

  Vita put her hand to her borrowed trilby and flushed. ‘I said, let go of her!’

  Silk’s face was pinched with embarrassment. ‘Go away,’ she hissed to Vita. ‘I’m fine.’